


Secrets

by flawedamythyst



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, PostSecret, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 09:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10738707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: When he had the chance, Clint liked reading the Sunday secrets on the PostSecret website because it reminded him that real people had secrets as well.It turns out that Bucky likes PostSecret as well.





	Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the PostSecret Project: http://postsecret.com

When he had the chance, Clint liked reading the Sunday secrets on the PostSecret website because it reminded him that real people had secrets as well. So much of his life was bound up in levels of security and who needed to know what and who didn't, and what everyone was better off not knowing, and it was easy to forget that it wasn't just spies who had layers of secrets hidden behind their eyes.

Plus there was often one or two postcards that either he identified with, or that reminded him of someone he knew.

_I suffer from that syndrome where your resting face makes you look like an angry serial killer._

_Don't be fooled, I probably still don't like you._

If Clint didn't know better he'd think Natasha wrote that, but she thought the PostSecret project was ridiculous.

“Secrets aren't for giving away to strangers,” she insisted. “And definitely not for posting on the internet, for the whole world to see.”

That had been before everything went down with Hydra. He'd taken great pleasure in reminding her of her words as he scrolled through all the top secret documents she'd dumped on the internet.

 

_I wish I knew exactly how many people I'd killed._

Clint paused his scrolling. He had a rough idea of what his kill count was, but there were too many variables in combat for him to be sure. Had that guy in Budapest made it to hospital in time, or had he suffered complications in surgery? Exactly how many insurgents had been left in that base when the bombs had gone off and it had collapsed in on itself? Should he be counting Chitauri deaths, or just keeping it to humans? Did that make him a bigot?

He took a deep breath and went to get himself a cup of coffee before he moved on to the rest of secrets.

 

_My life is nothing but secrets. I don't know how to be honest with myself any more._

It was only because Clint had spent so long staring at the secret from the person who wanted to know their kill count that he recognised the handwriting as being the same.

Well, it figured that anyone who had been involved in combat would have more secrets. Clint stared at it, tried not to think about how casually he'd lied to Tony the night before, when he'd asked about his family, without even stopping to consider if he could tell the truth. For a moment, while he'd been talking, he'd even been able to picture the family he'd created: the father who worked long hours but still had a smile for his kids when he came home, the mother who'd had time around looking after them all to paint watercolours, the brother who he'd got into scrapes with, who had shared his certainty that they were loved.

What the hell had been the point in lying to a team member, a guy who was pretty much a friend, about the distant past? Clint could have just waved the question off without answering and Tony would have left it, or he could even have made a vague reference to how miserable it had all been. There was no way that Tony would have used it against him.

What was the point in keeping secrets just for the sake of it?

He printed the postcard out, and then hunted down the last few that had spoken to him as well so that he could have them in hard copy, where they couldn't be easily erased or ignored.

 

_Even if I didn't have a choice and they made me do those things, the blood is still on my hands. How can I ever wash them clean?_

Clint's blood ran cold as he read that and he had to get up and walk away, look out of the window at the view of New York that spread out from his room in the Tower until he'd stopped seeing the helicarrier going down, carrying the bodies of SHIELD agents with arrows buried in them.

 _It's just a metaphor,_ he told himself. It wasn't some other guy who'd had his brain hijacked by an alien God, or something similar. It couldn't be.

Being touched by a secret, or identifying with the sentiment behind it, was very different to having the darkest thoughts of the thoughts he had buried as far down as he could written out in front of him in black and white.

Clint pushed the thought away, reminding himself for about the thousandth time that if Captain America didn't blame him for the innocents who died, then he shouldn't blame himself. It hadn't just been Steve, either. All the Avengers had gone from fighting against him to welcoming him on to their team without expressing any doubt, even the ones who had no reason to trust anyone from SHIELD, let alone the guy who'd just tried to take down the helicarrier.

It had taken him nearly a year to convince himself that he wasn't to blame for those deaths and there was still a faint doubt in his mind, especially on the long, dark nights when he just wasn't able to get to sleep. Whenever that happened, he forced himself to think of his friends, and reminded himself that he could trust their judgement on the matter.

Apparently, this guy didn't have that.

Clint went back to this computer and read over the words again. Right, he needed an email address that wouldn't be traced back to him.

 

_The only blood on your hands is the stuff you chose to put there. If someone else made that decision, it's on their hands instead. Trust the judgement of your friends – if they don't think you're too blame, you should let yourself believe them._

The guy who ran PostSecret put his email up underneath the postcard within a few hours, but there wasn't a response to it for a couple of weeks.

Clint's message had been printed out and stuck on a postcard, then the sender had scrawled, _Not got any friends left that I ain't hurt._

If Clint didn't live in a tower with Tony Stark, who thought it was funny to get all the Avengers merchandise sent over and then stick it up around the place, he probably wouldn't have recognised the postcard just from the thin border around the stuck on paper. As it was, he'd been staring at a montage of postcards of various Avengers every time he peed on the main level for about eight months, and he knew without checking that the red and blue stripe at the side was part of Cap's shield.

Why the hell would this person use a postcard of Steve? Clint tried to tell himself that it might just have been what they had lying around, but he couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to it than that.

He pulled out the other cards he'd printed out, sorting through to find the ones that all looked as if they had come from the same person. Put together, it seemed pretty likely that they were involved in the same line of work as Clint.

Either that, or they had embraced hyperbolic metaphor with all the fervour of an emo teenager.

Clint glanced through them again, then made a face to himself. No, he knew that wasn't it.

In fact, the more he looked at them, the more the nagging suspicion in the back of his head grew. There was one person who could have written all those postcards, and meant them, and who once been friends with Steve but might not believe that he was now.

Clint ran his hands through his hair, trying to think of the best way to do this, then picked up the secrets and took them downstairs to the room Steve and Sam had set up as their Winter Soldier Hunt headquarters.

Steve was bent over a map, frowning, which was exactly what he'd been doing ever since he and Sam had come back from DC in the wake of the destruction of SHIELD.

"Hey, Cap," said Clint. "Got something you should see."

"Not right now, I think we're getting somewhere," said Steve, not looking up.

Clint glanced over at Sam, who rolled his eyes, and then just dumped the print out of the most innocuous postcard onto the map, in front of Steve's eyes.

Steve twitched with irritation, then his eyes widened and he snatched it up. "Where the hell did this come from?"

"It's his handwriting, then?" asked Clint.

Steve nodded, not taking his eyes off it. "Yeah. I'd know it anywhere. Did you find this somewhere?"

"In a manner of speaking," said Clint. "Do you know what the PostSecret project is?"

Steve shook his head, but Sam made a quiet noise of recognition and grabbed a tablet.

"It's a thing where you write your secrets on a postcard and send it to this guy, and he picks a few to put online every week," said Clint. From Steve's frown, he didn't really get it, but he took the tablet Sam put in his hands.

"There have been a couple with that handwriting," said Clint. "The one this week made me think it might be your guy."

Steve had scrolled down far enough to read it. "This email was from you?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Clint, scratching at the back of head. Right, he should have realised that he was losing his anonymity by doing this. "Let me show you the others."

Steve flipped through them in silence, his face growing more shuttered, then he glanced back up. "How do we use this to track him?"

"We don't," said Clint. "They're sent anonymously. Even if we get the guy who runs it to show us the postcards, all we'd get is a postmark. What we can do is use it to communicate with him. If he's reading this website every week-"

"-then we can leave a message for him on it," finished Steve, nodding.

"JARVIS, can we get the phone number of the guy who runs it?" asked Sam. "I'll talk to him and get him to include a postcard we send him on next Sunday's post."

Steve nodded. Clint slapped his shoulder. "Guess that means you've just got to find a way to persuade him to come in from the cold using only a postcard and without making it obvious to anyone else reading what we're doing," he said. "Good luck."

Steve sent him an irritated look, but he was already rifling through the postcards again, clearly looking for inspiration. Clint left him to it.

 

Steve's postcard was about halfway down the Sunday Secrets that week. Clint read it while still in bed, admiring the sketch of one of the rides on Coney Island, people with figures in 1940s outfits.

 _I'm with you till the end of the line,_ he'd written on it. _The line isn't anywhere close to the end yet. You're always welcome anywhere I am, and no one here blames you._

Clint considered it for a few minutes, wondering how he'd react to that from Natasha after having gone through what Bucky had gone through. Would it get him to come in?

He couldn't decide and gave up in favour of scrolling onto the next postcard. All they could do now was wait.

 

Two weeks passed, during which time Steve spent a lot of time refreshing the PostSecret website as if that were going to make a difference.

Clint was on his way back from a run, jogging towards the main entrance to the tower and trying to decide if he should have a shower before coffee or after, when a noise from an alleyway attracted his attention. He glanced over and stopped dead, his body abruptly switching to combat mode at the sight in front of him.

Barnes was dressed in a battered leather jacket over a hoodie with the hood pulled up, his hair hanging lankly over his face. An old backpack was slung over one shoulder and his metal hand was in his pocket, clenched in a way that made Clint think there was probably a weapon in it.

“Hey, buddy,” said Clint, as calmly as he could.

Barnes looked him over. “You're one of them,” he said. “The archer.”

“Yup,” said Clint. “And you're Steve's friend.”

That earned him a long stare, followed by an awkward shift of Barnes's shoulders. “So I'm meant to believe.”

“Steve's inside,” said Clint, jerking his head in the direction of the tower. “Are you coming up?”

There was a long silence, then Barnes let out a long, slow breath and the hand in his pocket unclenched. “I guess that's what I came here for,” he said, although he didn't sound certain about that.

“C'mon, then,” said Clint, and started back down the street, walking this time. It only took a few seconds for Barnes to catch up with him, glancing around as if expecting an attack.

“Steve's gonna be stoked to see you,” said Clint, trying to keep things light and easy.

Barnes just snorted. “Sure,” he said, sceptically. His eyes darted around to follow the movement of a man going down the other pavement.

The front entrance of the tower was an enormous lobby with revolving doors and several security guards. Barnes eyed it very suspiciously but followed Clint as he gave the guards a wave and headed inside.

“I know it'll probably take a while for you to believe me,” said Clint as he led the way to the private elevator at the back that led up to the Avengers floors, “but trust me. No one here is gonna hold anything Hydra did against you, least of all Steve.”

Barnes didn't reply to that, but he did get into the elevator with Clint despite the wary look he gave it. Clint activated it with his handprint and it started to head up.

“JARVIS, could you let Steve know that we've got a guest?”

“Of course, Agent Barton,” said JARVIS.

Barnes blinked and glanced around the elevator with a scowl, but didn't comment. Clint gave him a grin. “He's gonna be like a kid on his birthday,” he said. “You might want to brace yourself.”

Barnes took a deep breath. “He actually used to get more excited at Christmas than on his birthday,” he said.

The doors opened to reveal Steve already waiting. “Bucky,” he said, with emotion, and Clint got the hell out of the way. He figured that was an emotional reunion that didn't need a spectator.

 

They didn't see much of Steve, and nothing at all of Barnes, for several days. Clint quietly rescued his copies of Barnes's secrets from the stack of maps in the briefing room now that Steve didn't need them any more. He glanced through them before he put them back with the other secrets he'd kept, and was struck again by just how much of what Barnes seemed to be struggling with were things Clint could identify with. Maybe when he'd settled in enough to leave Steve's floor, Clint would see about talking to him, see if he could help.

Except, Clint was really kinda shit at all that counselling bullshit. Just because he knew what it felt like to be brainwashed didn't mean he had the slightest idea how to help Barnes with it. He'd probably only end fucking things up, like he always seemed to. Especially as he now had his own secret pressing down on him, urging to be scrawled down on a postcard and sent off.

He didn't end up sending it off for another week, after Barnes had started coming to dinner and interacting with everyone, making it clearer with every second Clint spent in the same room as him that this was going to be a problem.

_I feel kinda guilty about how hot I think you are when you're only staying here to get your head back together but, Jesus Christ, you really are smoking hot._

 

Clint was slumped on the sofa in the main room with a cup of coffee and a tablet, running his eyes over PostSecret and trying not to fall asleep after a long night of fighting the Serpent Society. He wanted to stay up until Natasha was back from medical so that he could double-check her injuries were nothing worse than bruises but if she took too much longer, he wasn't sure he'd be able to manage it. 

Barnes came in, paused when he saw Clint, then headed over to sit next to him.

“You look whacked,” he said.

“Yeah,” agreed Clint, then narrowed his eyes. If Barnes was here without Steve hovering over him like he usually did, that meant one of two things. “Please tell me Steve's asleep and not in the gym.”

Barnes shrugged. “Sorry, man. He didn't look even half as tired as you do.”

Clint sighed. “Goddamn fucking super-soldiers,” he muttered.

Barnes glanced at his screen, then tensed. His hands clenched into fists on his knees, then relaxed. “Steve said you were the one that spotted my postcards.”

Clint glanced at the secret on screen, which was from a college RA. “Yeah,” he said. “They were kinda familiar-seeming.”

Barnes pressed his lips tightly together and ducked a nod. “That email was from you.”

“Yeah,” said Clint, quietly. “I guess I identified.”

Barnes was silent for a long moment and Clint scrolled on to the next secret. It was about someone's poor relationship with their mother. Barnes leaned in to read it and Clint angled the screen so he could see better. They sat there in silence, reading over the secrets together until Natasha got back and Clint finally got to go to bed.

 

It ended up becoming a ritual. Every Sunday morning, Clint would make coffee for them both then they'd sit together and read the Sunday Secrets together. As Barnes relaxed around the team and became _Bucky_ rather than Barnes, he started to add in comments about some of the postcards and they'd end up talking about them. It didn't help with Clint's crush at all, but he didn't have any interest in stopping.

_I pretend not to have noticed I've got the same facial hair as Tony Stark even though I grew it like this on purpose._

Clint sniggered to himself. “Hey, JARVIS, can you print that one for me?”

“It will be on the printer in your room,” said JARVIS.

Bucky glanced at him. “You print them?”

Clint shrugged. “Some of them,” he said. “The ones that make me laugh. The ones I identify with.”

Bucky frowned. “You said you identified with mine.”

“Yeah,” said Clint, and left it at that.

 

 

Three weeks later, Clint came back from a run to find a piece of paper on his bed. He picked it up to see it was a print out of a secret that had been on PostSecret the day before, one that he'd have printed out if Bucky hadn't been sitting right next to him.

_Reading PostSecret with you is the best part of my week._

He hadn't wanted to look at it too long when he'd read it in case Bucky thought something of it, but now he had it in his hand he could see more details. It was written over a photo of a sofa from a furniture website that he realised was the same as the one in the main lounge that he and Bucky sat on every week, and the writing was the same shade of purple as Clint's combat suit.

He stared at it, hope leaping in his chest. He knew that handwriting. Why hadn't he realised before that he knew that handwriting?

There was a noise from the door and he turned to see Bucky hovering there, hands shoved deep in his pockets.

“Wondered if you might identify with that one,” he said, gruffly.

Clint glanced down at the print out again. “You know,” he said slowly, “I actually kinda do.”

Bucky let out a long breath, shoulders relaxing and his chin raising up as a smile grew on his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” agreed Clint, then decided that if Bucky was up to taking a risk on this, then he could take one too. He dropped the paper back on the bed and strode over to Bucky. “Want to maybe try doing something together that makes this part of the week good as well?”

“Definitely,” said Bucky, and kissed him.


End file.
